Are You Using SPF Records?

gravyface writes "I've been setting up proper Sender Policy Framework records for all my clients for past year or so, hoping to either maintain or improve their 'reputation' in the email universe. However, there's a lot of IT admins I speak with who either haven't heard of SPF records or haven't bothered setting them up. How many of you are using SPF records for your mail domains? Does it help? How many anti-spam vendors out there use SPF records as part of their 'scorecard'?"

Comments

Use SPF = Get Your Own Mail Deleted

[CritterNYC]

If you use SPF, you only succeed in getting your own email deleted.

When you send email to your buddy, let's call him Jim, with his own vanity domain, it gets forwarded to his ISP email account. Since his ISP is checking SPF records, it'll check your domain's, see that your email isn't coming from your own server (it's coming from Jim's vanity domain host) and block it. Like most vanity domain hosts, no message will be sent back to you to let you know your mail was blocked.

Congratulations, you just got your own legitimate email blocked and disappeared with no way for you or your friend Jim to know.

SPF makes incorrect assumptions about the way everyone uses email. It then attempts to make up for these incorrect assumptions by suggesting that everyone use SRS... which, of course, no one uses.

If you use SPF, you get your own email deleted. Don't use SPF.